Measuring performance
Price return
The return from price movement alone, ignoring dividends and interest.
How it works
Most headline index numbers are price returns. It is a legitimate measure of what the price did and an incomplete measure of what an investor earned.
The gap between price return and total return over long periods is large — enough to change the conclusion of most comparisons.
Related terms
- Total returnThe full return from an investment: price change plus every dividend or interest payment received.
- Dividend yieldAnnual dividends per share as a percentage of the share price.
- BenchmarkThe index or reference portfolio you measure yourself against, to see whether your decisions added anything.
More in Measuring performance
- Real return
- Performance attribution
- Realised profit and loss
- Overfitting
- Risk-free rate
- Out-of-sample testing
- Sharpe ratio
- Nominal return
All 29 Measuring performance terms · The full glossary, 433 terms
Educational reference only. Nothing here is investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell anything, and tax treatment depends on your own circumstances and the country you are in.